BEL eyes Rs 65 cr exports this fiscal

Bharat Electronics Limited, state-owned defence electronics firm, aims to end current financial year with exports of some $15 million (Rs 65 crore), its chairman and managing director Y Gopala Rao told reporters here on Tuesday. Last year, BEL earned export revenues of some $9 million (Rs 41 crore), he said.

This year, export orders included deals to supply battlefield surveillance radars to Indonesia and Sudan: "We have signed a contract with Sudan for 10 radars and for Indonesia we have delivered two," he said.

Other export deals bagged this year include a Rs 10 crore order to supply solar panels to Sudan and a $1.8 million (Rs 8 crore) order for building solar powered traffic signal lights for Surinam. "There has been serious efforts to improve exports." Defence supplies accounts for 73 per cent of BEL's revenues, he said.

BEL and a Bangalore-based Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) lab, the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) developed the short range radars that were exported. BEL manufactures them, mostly for the Indian armed forces and last April it supplied some 1,200 units for about Rs 551 crore to the army.

"Two-thirds of our revenues come from products developed indigenously by BEL, DRDO and other labs." BEL aims to end the fiscal with revenues of Rs 3,200 crore, compared with last year's Rs 2,798 crore.

BEL will display its products and equipment at the Aero India 2005, the biennial defence aerospace trade show starting here on Wednesday. These will include communication equipment, command and control systems, radars, sonars, opto-electronics and thermal imaging products, tank electronics, simulators and trainers and gun upgrades, a company release said.